


If Music Be The Food of Love

by tevinterimperium



Category: The Band's Visit
Genre: Character Study, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Gay Panic, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Making Out, Music, Neck Kissing, Reflection, Sexual Tension, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 10:24:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15410868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tevinterimperium/pseuds/tevinterimperium
Summary: Haled leans against the hard wall of the rink. A cigarette hangs loosely from his mouth, his eyes half-lidded as he watches the smoke spiral up towards the sky. The lights and music from inside the rink pour through the open door, hints of pink and blue reflected on the cement, the bass from some song which Haled has never heard humming beneath the sound of his ears ringing. There is no wind in Beit Hatikva. Everything sits and waits.





	If Music Be The Food of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I am making the tags for this musical. you all have forced me to do this. here it is: the first TBV fic on AO3.
> 
> WARNING: this is quite self-indulgent and quite needlessly wordy. that's just who I am!
> 
> enjoy!

Haled leans against the hard wall of the rink. A cigarette hangs loosely from his mouth, his eyes half-lidded as he watches the smoke spiral up towards the sky. The lights and music from inside the rink pour through the open door, hints of pink and blue reflected on the cement, the bass from some song which Haled has never heard humming beneath the sound of his ears ringing. There is no wind in Beit Hatikva. Everything sits and waits.

Haled takes the cigarette from his mouth and squashes it against the stucco. His second knuckles scrape against the brick as the tobacco is smothered out. He is about to stand up straight and wander his way back to Dina’s house, tired and aching and dull, when Papi stumbles out. He’s framed in purple. He staggers, unsteady, like a newborn deer.

“Hi,” says Haled, pushing himself off the wall.

“Hi,” says Papi, dazed.

He is unaccompanied by Julia or by any other woman, Haled notices quickly. His hair is a little messier than it was before. His eyes are blown wide and innocent, though the details of his face are washed out by the darkness. The sun has set. The air is humid and empty, as it has been for the past hour.

“She did not want to join you home?”

“No, no,” Papi replies, making a flapping gesture with his hand,  _no big deal_. “Maybe next time. We will see. Not tonight. Doesn’t feel right tonight.”

“No,” Haled agrees, “Next time though, eh?”

“If I don’t hear the sea again,” says Papi. It is a joke; he is grinning. His features still caught in the rink’s glow are bathed in blue now, his profile written in the colors of the night.

Haled does not ask how Julia will be spending the rest of the evening, what Zelger is up to, or what is happening in the little city of Beit Hatikva. Tomorrow he will be gone. The world still spins.

“Do you want to come home with me?”

“What?”’

“Come to my house,” Papi amends quickly, pointing over Haled’s shoulder to where the apartments lay in perfect rows. If it were a bit lighter, Haled could see his face turning a pretty shade of pink. “I know you are staying with Dina, but just for a moment. For a drink.”

Haled is nodding and smiling, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head at an angle just so. “A nightcap, eh?”

Papi says, “Yes,” through an exhale, as if he would be drowning without it. He pats Haled on his shoulder, brief and awkward and fleeting, and starts walking home.

The journey is in silence. Haled watches the backdrop as they walk, glancing at the buildings which line the road and the sky. There is not much to see: empty parking lots and structures, never any people. Haled doesn’t know the time, but in Alexandria, everyone would be alive. Everyone is still alive there now without him. This town sits in speechless peace in Israel and Haled is both lucky and unlucky enough to have stumbled upon it.

The only din is the murmur of the lamps struggling to stay on mixing with the distant buzz of music. Haled can tell it is the beats of tomorrow’s concert bleeding into tonight. Men seated in funny blue costumes just like him, drums squeezed between their knees, instruments pulled to their mouths. It makes him smile, distantly, as though he is but an observer in all of this. He knows Tewfiq does not join them. He knows Tewfiq would never dare.

“You got to look on the city?” Papi asks. It is out of nowhere. He speaks as though he believes it is the wrong thing to do, his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders rolled forward.

Haled does not like the way his body curves, but does not comment on it. “Yes,” he says, letting his teeth peek out from beneath his lips, a half-smile. There is no light to catch the grin, but he hopes Papi can hear it. All noise. All sounds and music to explain the world. “I looked on the city.”

Papi nods, the movement both clear and fuzzy in the darkness. His gaze falls to the ground as if it were exhausting to keep his head up and tilted at Haled. He lets Papi watch the road as he watches the sky, the moon, the stars. He never learned the constellations. Still, there is beauty in its mystery.

Most of the lights in the apartment buildings are off. It is eery in its quiet. The music from earlier seems to have stopped; the band has gone to bed, preparing for the grand concert tomorrow, after which Haled will return home, marry a woman he does not love, and possibly never play an instrument again. The thought is easy to forget, but when his mind goes blank in the evening, it presses in. Suffocating. Never-ending. The sound of Haled’s feet hitting the concrete echoes down the path.

Papi is pulling him into his apartment. He fumbled with the keys thirty seconds ago, never finding the right grip. He kept on looking back at Haled sheepishly, as though he were a girl he was trying to impress. Now, Papi’s fingers are wrapped around Haled’s wrist, and the index of his other hand is pulled to his lips. “The others are sleeping,” he explains in a harsh whisper. “We will go to the kitchen.”

Haled nods, curls his hand beneath Papi’s grip into a fist, and follows.

There is not much to see in the scope of Beit Hativka’s apartments. In a variation from Dina’s, Papi has posters for bands which Haled has never heard of before near the stove, above the kitchen table. He opens the window behind the sink to let in the fresh air. Haled stands watching, mystified.

“Sit,” Papi insists, voice a bit louder. He squeezes behind Haled and pulls out a chair for him before turning and throwing open the fridge, taking in the cool draft.

Haled does not, out of politeness. As Papi is digging, he asks, looking around the room, “Why she not join you? The girl from the rink?” but does not expect a response, does not receive one.

Papi emerges with two beers in brown bottles, logos in Hebrew pasted to the side. He opens them easily on the counter, then slides both onto the table and sits without fully extracting his chair from beneath the table. His expression lights up when Haled joins him.

“A nightcap,” Haled says. A toast. He knocks the neck of the bottle against Papi’s, and Papi smiles shyly before taking a sip. He is not looking quite at Haled when he speaks.

“Why she not join?”

“I told you. Doesn’t feel right,” Papi says. A hint of that exasperation, a reminder that Haled is a foreigner. He had called himself a tourist, but foreigner is the right word. Papi’s body curling into himself, pushing him away. Haled pressing closer. He was always good at that.

“With us visitors, you mean.”

“Yes. But you also… helped me.” It sounds as if Papi is struggling to find the words. Haled knows the feeling. He lays his hand on the table, reaching for Haled, though Haled does not meet him there. It is all a gesture of goodwill. “I wanted to thank you. To stop me from hearing the sea.” Haled shakes his head. Smiles. “You did not need to worry about the sea. It is all in motions.”

“What?”

“You know,” Haled says, shrugging, grinning still, “arm around the shoulder. Rubbing the knee. Not as much the conversation. The actions.”

Papi is blushing. Haled can see the red at his cheeks. Perhaps it’s the heat of the tiny room, but perhaps it’s the thought. “Yes. Thank you for… guiding me. I was lost.”

Haled hums. He rubs his thumbnail along the paper of the beer bottle before reclining back in the seat and taking a long sip. He feels his throat bobbing. It has been a long day, and he deserves it, and he is stuck in a tiny town in Israel and it is all his own fault.

“Is that how you always get the girls? With the motions?”

“Me?” Haled asks. It is a silly question, but Papi is also asking a silly question. “No, no. Not just the motions. Music.”

“You sing to them?” asks Papi, incredulous. He is slanted forward on his seat, his elbows atop against the table, the beer bottle hanging close to his lips. His brows are furrowed, which draws creases at his forehead. The expression is something very childish, but charming.

“No. I ask them, about music.” He cocks his head to the side again. “Do you know Chet Baker?”

“Like jazz?”

“Yes,” Haled says. He always liked it most when the pretty women would never know who he was, and Haled would purr the words in their ears as he edged closer and closer still. Of course, Papi is not a pretty woman, and his knowledge is far better than their ignorance, though he cannot explain why. “Like jazz. I tell them about him.”

“Why?”

“Jazz is the music of love.”

Papi looks like he is considering this. He takes another sip of the beer, keeping the creases at his forehead. He taps mindlessly at the table. He is a rather handsome man in this light, the yellow-orange of the kitchen, the dark creeping through the window. His hair curls and falls into his face, past the framing, past the gel or mousse or whatever product is tensely smoothed into it. His eyes are a beautiful shade of brown. Honeyed chocolate.

Haled looks away with a firm sweep of the head, turning to examine the poster beside him. It is peeling at the edges.

“What is this?”

“My music,” Papi says, plainly. He says everything as though it is plain. He has been holed up in Beit Hativka long enough to believe it is.

“What kind of music is it?”

“Eh, you know, normal stuff.”

“What is normal?” asks Haled. He is sitting up straighter. The curiosity always seizes him. Here is a man who he knows almost nothing about with whom he sharing a drink with him, despite the fact that he had a pretty girl on his arm half an hour ago. It is easier to talk about music than the ins and outs of personal history, and, Haled believes, it reveals just as much.

“You know. Rock. Classic rock. You know Queen?”

“Yes,” Haled says, “I like–ah– _Crazy Little Thing Called Love_.”

Papi is grinning, toothy. “Yes. That. I love them. And the other big ones–you know, eh, Hendrix, AC/DC. They all sound different, but they have the same… feeling.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know. Being yourself. Fighting for it.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. You’re the musician.”

“You do not need to play it to see it.”

“See it?”

He clicks his tongue, looking for the words in English. Much clumsier in English. “Understand it. Know the… feeling. Like you said.”

“Is that why you like jazz? The feeling?” asks Papi. The two of them are both supported by the table, which brings them closer together than Haled would’ve expected from Papi. He seems like the kind to shy away.

He doesn’t. Haled is impressed, a feeling which lightens his chest. He takes another sip, says, “Yes. All smooth. Random. Not like what the band plays.”

“No?”

“No. All… classical Arab music. You know? Uhm Kultum? Farid al Atrash?”

Papi hums. He is swirling the bottle around to hear the noise of the drink’s dregs hitting the sides of the glass. At Haled’s attention falling to him, he takes a final pull, snaps himself out of it. “Not my kind of stuff.”

“Not my kind of stuff, either,” Haled says. He can feel the dimples forming at his cheeks with the smile. “But, you know, we are in trouble. No more after this.”

“What?” asks Papi, wide-eyed, innocent, handsome. “No more what?”

“Music. Band. No more funding.  _Kkch_ ,” Haled explains, gesturing with a cutting motion across his throat, like he did earlier. Arranged marriage, Tewfiq’s punishment, all the same. “This? The final screw. Tomorrow is the last concert.”

“What do you mean, ‘final screw’?”

“Getting us lost here. My fault. If the band is not done, I am thrown out.”

Papi blinks quite a few times. His eyelashes are rather delicate and beautiful. The beer bottle in his hands is empty. “It was you? That was why he was nagging on you–at the café?”

“Yes. I am not worried. Always knew it would happen. Tewfiq looks for an excuse to be done with me.”

Haled is leaning back again, legs spread, body lax. Papi takes the empty bottle from Haled’s hand, something which he had not realized he had finished, and slides it onto the counter. He does not speak as he returns to the fridge to fish out two more. He shoves them in and out of the bottle opener pasted at the cabinet, just beneath the linoleum, with jerky movements. The sound of the cap hitting the floor startles them both.

“You want to hear my music? Chet Baker?”

“What?” asks Papi. He seems to be asking that an awful lot.

Haled says, “I can play it for you. I have my trumpet. Back at Dina’s house.”

“Oh, you don’t need to–,”

“I would like to,” Haled presses. Papi is still standing, his back against the countertop. His shirt, Haled has just realized, is further unbuttoned. The line of his sternum is just peaking through the cloth.

“We would have to go outside,” Papi says, quickly, nervously, “to not wake the others.”

“Of course,” Haled replies, rising. Papi nods, squeezes past Haled, and walks on his tiptoes through his own living room, a guide in the dark when Haled has already learned the path. Haled squeezes close to him despite the outlines of furniture he can make out beneath the black. Papi’s elbow puts pressure against Haled’s side, Haled’s hand brushing near Papi’s waist.

Outside the atmosphere is cooler than it was half an hour ago, and much cooler than the indoors. Night is just oppressive and quiet as it was before. Haled itches to ruin the peace. “I will be right back,” he says, seriously, placing his palm onto Papi’s shoulder. “Just getting my trumpet.”

Papi nods, sweetly. He crosses his arms over his chest in a motion that feels distinctly to be mocking Haled and leans back against the front of his home. He smirks, all for show, and jerks his chin up. Haled turns on his heel and walks towards the stairwell, the smile on his lips on growing with the distance.

He could return to Dina’s and not go back, go to sleep, rest well for the concert as Tewfiq expects him to. The thought passes briefly, distantly through his mind as he takes the steps two at a time, trying to find the right line of doors. _I don’t sleep_ , he had said to Papi, and he stands by it.

Dina’s door is open, and though he regards the apartment with the same caution that he did Papi’s, Tewfiq and Dina are seated at the kitchen table, just as he had been with Papi. Analogous thoughts. “Hi,” he says, looking from Tewfiq to Dina then back again.

There are two wine glasses on the table. Tewfiq holds his by the stem though doesn’t move to bring it to his lips; it is almost entirely full. Dina’s is nearing empty. She reclines deeply in her chair, an arm thrown around the back of it.

“Going to bed now, Haled?” asks Dina, charming and devilish in the late hour. Her eyes are sparkling. He wonders how long they have been here, drinking, waiting. He doesn’t know what they’re waiting for. It certainly wasn’t Haled.

“No, no,” he replies, gravitating towards the instrument in its case on the countertop. It has been moved from the seat parallel to Tewfiq’s in his absence. “Just getting my trumpet.”

“What for?”

“Personal concert,” he explains, “for Papi.”

One of Dina’s eyebrows raises high. She sits up straight and brings her knees closer together. “Oh? I thought you were looking on the city.”

“I was, with Papi.”

“And now you’re giving him a performance, eh?”

“Chet Baker,” Haled says, in lieu of a further explanation.

“Ah, he has found a willing audience, General,” Dina comments, leaning onto the table and closer to Tewfiq. “You must have taught him well.”

Tewfiq, who has been keeping his gaze fixated on the tile beneath Haled’s feet and the scuffing on his shoes, slowly raises his inspection to look properly at Haled. His lips are pressed together into a solemn line. “I like Chet Baker,” he says, haltingly, as if he cannot find the words. “I have all his recordings. From the beginning to the last concert.”

The coloring of the world suddenly changes, slightly, from suffocating reds and oranges into a cool blue. It changes the color of the shadows, of the casting over Tewfiq’s face, of the curves and lines of Dina’s skin. Here is Tewfiq, the man who has told him time and time again that he is unworthy, unprofessional, unwilling; here is Tewfiq, who has heard him speak of Chet Baker time and time again, always keeping his knowledge and thoughts on hold at the tip of his tongue. It does not change the whole of the world, but the details of it. Tewfiq’s words of harshness shifting in the late-night glow.

“I would be honored, to listen to it with you sometime,” Haled says, just as slowly and carefully as Tewfiq had. The universe is made of porcelain. Tewfiq reshapes himself from being made of stone into flesh and blood. Haled himself is all blood, ringing in his ears, running through his veins. The hum.

Tewfiq nods once, a calculated gesture. “I will listen to you play it sometime.”

“Maybe after Papi’s concert, eh?” Dina asks, resting her cheek upon her fist. She is exquisite. Exquisite enough to fall in love with for one evening, Haled thinks, a voice in the back of his head. “One for us.”

“I’m afraid it is late, we must be well-rested for tomorrow–,”

“Nuh-uh, General,” she interrupts, beautiful in her brashness, “it is for the sake of music. You’ll stay awake.”

Tewfiq blinks once, twice, considering. “I will stay awake,” he repeats, this time to Haled. Haled nods, buttoned-up, tense.

He spots the watermelon from this afternoon on its cutting board, left untouched by whatever Tewfiq and Dina have been doing. The abandoned slices all lean against each other in sagging rows. “May I take some?” he asks, thrown over his shoulder to Dina.

She hums, her fingers tangling in her hair before untangling themselves again. “Sure,” she says lazily, and Haled takes two slices in his free hand while gripping onto the trumpet case with the other.

“Thank you,” he mutters and moves to duck out before he can interrupt further. The woman wants to go out, Haled had said in easy Arabic flowing off of his tongue, watching the careful pull between the two of them, why not take her out?

Tewfiq clears his throat and straightens out, the crooked General becoming whole again. “Do not stay out too late, Haled.”

Haled says, “Yes, sir,” hugs his trumpet case to his chest, and slips out of the doorframe. Behind him, the low purr of Dina’s voice makes him pause in his exit, but it is too hushed and too intimate for him to turn around. He can already imagine Tewfiq’s fingers rising to grip the wine glass again, delicate and hesitant and age-worn, spinning the glass around the table and never rising to take a sip. He is far too cautious for it. Haled, meanwhile, drinks beer with Papi and struggles through the English and sits just as they did, parallel, looking at each other but not quite admitting to it.

It is late, and Haled is tired, and he intends to play jazz for a man he has just met outside of his little apartment in a nowhere-town in Israel.

Papi is sitting against the wall by the time Haled returns. His shoulders fall forward naturally, an unattractive slouch that mixes with the softness of his expression, with his hands wringing together and his elbows rested on his knees. When he sees Haled, he smiles. He pulls himself up and presses a palm against the wall, his other hand at his hip. He is parodying the same casual attitude which he had employed earlier. Charming. Sweet.

“Hi,” Haled says through a breath. The trumpet case hits the ground with a clang.

“Hi,” replies Papi, looking from his lips to his case to the fruit in his hands. “Is that for me?”

“In case you were hungry,” Haled explains. He switches to hold one out to Papi and the other close to his mouth, and before Papi can accept the offering fully, Haled takes a bite from his own. The juice runs down his fingertips, dribbles past his lips, threatens to drip down his chin. He chews all on one side of his mouth. It is fresh and jolting in the lazy night air.

Papi is frozen at the sight of it. His mouth has fallen open in the slightest, his face flushed again, innocent and uncorrupted and enraptured. It is far too easy to make a scene for him. If Haled were a different man, he would tease; he can feel the laughter bubbling in his chest. Of course, if Haled were a different man, he would be back in Dina’s apartment, sliding his hand up her leg and waiting for the glass to break. Haled, instead, is the man who stands before Papi, offering to play his trumpet in the dark, not poking at any of Papi’s soft spots even though it would be too easy to do so.

Instead, he eats quickly, tosses aside the rind, and presses his thumb into his mouth to rid of the juices. The taste of dirt and watermelon hit his tongue. “I clean later, eh?” he says, nodding to the rind. Papi manages a grip on his own slice. Haled moves to begin the music. After a moment, Papi coughs, then stands properly.

“Which song?”

“What?” Haled asks, pausing. He is inserting the mouthpiece and testing the valves, automatic.

“Which song, are you playing.”

“Ah. My Funny Valentine.”

“Oh,” Papi says. He pauses, then nods, then rolls back his shoulder. “I know that one.”

“Good. One of my favorites,” Haled supplies, smiles again. Papi eases. The reason the bachelorettes of Beit Hatikva do not fall to his feet is that he is too easy to read. His discomfort radiates from him, whether it be through the hard line of his shoulders or the little motions of shifting. Women like mystery. Papi is no mystery.

Not in the way they would like, anyways. To Haled, he is still written in outlines, a man not shaded in. There is more to him than what meets the eye.

By the time Haled raises the trumpet to his lips, Papi has regained himself. He blows once, a test, then glances to Papi for permission; when he receives a nod, he begins and lets the sound guide him.

It is much harder for him to describe playing music than it is for most things. Love and beauty and life can be written in words and in music notes, flowing over the ear, off the tongue, into the heart. This, Haled can understand, this, Haled can explain, the shared experience. However, what he sees when he closes his eyes and feels the music, the creation of a song, cannot be explained, in English or in Arabic. The classical music is all rhythm, vibrations, the beat of the heart, while jazz is smoother, the inhale into the exhale, the give, the weightlessness. What he plays in the band reminds him that he is alive and here and steady; what he plays for Papi makes him almost think he is more than man.

He plays what he knows. Plays what he remembers. It lasts a minute, if that at all. Time loses itself. Haled loses time. He floats, he drifts, he lets himself fall. He can almost hear the piano accompaniment, the stillness of the crowd, the attention for him. It is only Papi, not a music hall, but he is just as enraptured as one thousand people would be.

It ends gently. If Haled were edging closer to tipsy, he would think the empty air is echoing the sounds of his trumpet.

Haled looks at Papi. Papi looks right back at him. “Beautiful,” he says with his face still blank, his mind not aware that his lips are moving. “Really. Very good.”

He smiles, nods, and begins to pack up the trumpet again. His hands move without direction, just as Papi’s mouth speaks without permission. The movement is mindless; the dissembling of art to only be put back together again. Perhaps for Dina and Tewfiq. Perhaps for nobody at all.

Once packed, Haled leans against the wall, reaches for the cigarette pack in his pocket, even if he does not normally smoke. A gift from Zelger. A thank you.  _Papi, he has few friends, he had said,_ pressing the packet into his hand,  _good on you for helping him, you know, with the girls._  “Do you have a lighter?”

Papi startles. “Me? No. I can get one inside, but…”

“No, no,” Haled says, flapping his hand just like Papi had earlier,  _no big deal_. “Thank you. It is all right.”

Haled leans back again, slipping the pack away. He watches the buzzing light. There are bugs trapped inside the plastic, and it flickers between white and yellow. Mesmerizing, a staple of a little town with no one to care for it.

Papi looks at him sidelong. “Is this what you want to do?”

“What?”

“Music,” he says. “In life. Is this your… thing?”

Haled pauses. The thought had crossed his mind in the academy. As a child, he had dreamed far higher than a musician in a policemen band, concert halls and stages and audience sharp in the foreground. The images are blurry now. “Maybe.”

He looks to Papi now, watermelon abandoned in his hand, aimless. He gazes into the black of nightfall. Haled tries to follow his line of sight. “What about you?”

“What about me?” he quips, defensive. This is the best word to describe the man Haled first met in the café, outside of the apartments: defensive. Baring teeth.

“You work at Dina’s? Do you aim higher?”

Papi slouches. “I suppose. I did not used to. Always content with what I had.” He pauses. Glances nervously at Haled. “But no one here is content with what they have. Always dreaming of leaving. I suppose I am one of them.”

“Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Not sure if I’m cut out for big city, though.”

“Like Alexandria?” asks Haled. He turns so that just his left shoulder presses against the wall, the whole of his body facing Papi.

Papi grins, but it is as if his mind were one hundred miles away. “Yes. But I like the people here. It is home. I’m not sure if I could leave it.”

“No?”

“No.”

Haled wishes to ask him dozens of questions. Papi is looking forward and Haled can see his profile perfectly, partially covered in shadow. He wishes to know which people make it home, which ones make him want to flee. Which parts tug at Papi bittersweetly, forward and backward again. He wishes to know the details, but he knows that he cannot ask for them. They are strangers encircling each other in the twilight.

“What will you do after this?” Papi asks instead of waiting, waiting, waiting for Haled to speak. His eyes are wide, searching, endless, focused only on Haled. A sea. Not the kind of sea that Papi hears in his ears: the kind of whirlpools, tiny miracles, something that can be tamed. Something Haled wants to explore. “Petah Tikvah.”

“I do not know,” Haled says, instead of any of one thousand thoughts swirling, “see the world. Play more music. Whatever I feel. That is the point of all of this, eh?”

Papi says, “Yes,” nods his head twice, then grabs onto Haled by the lapels to kiss him messily on the mouth.

Papi’s enthusiasm is counteracted by the steady force that is Haled, all muscle and bone and learning to stand his ground. Haled holds the benefit of still being leaned against the wall, while Papi is scrabbling at the line of his coat to haul Haled closer to him. He makes a noise against Haled’s lips, a complaint, subconscious but loud to Haled’s senses with the sound of the blood in his ears and the heartbeat in his chest.

Haled gives in after a second, maybe two, because he has always learned to kiss back pretty boys with eager fingers.

He takes Papi by the waist and switches their position, Papi against the wall and Haled before him. He is careful enough to not break the kiss. Always careful. He grips him steadily, gently, unwilling to overstep but willing to wander. A hand slides back to rest at the small of Papi’s back. Papi makes a sound again, swimming in the closeness.

It is a perfect mixture of chaste and desperate. Haled pulls back, afraid that Papi would rather suffocate than be the one to break it.

“When you say you have never,” Haled is saying against Papi’s lips, “do you mean, you have never…?”

“Never,” Papi says, then presses himself further against Haled, frustrated, until Haled gives in and ducks just so. Whining is how Haled would describe the noises from Papi’s throat. Papi is warm. The contact is both too much and too little at once.

Just as Papi urges his tongue into Haled’s mouth, Haled pulls back, quickly. Despite himself, a rush of heat drops to his stomach. “Inside?” he asks in a whisper, dangerous inches placed between his and Papi’s face.

Papi nods, frantic.

He pulls Haled through the living room once more by grasping onto his fingers, not quite entangling them but edging close to it. Haled curls his hand into a fist and squeezes. In the light, Haled will be able to see the red at his cheeks which spreads down his neck, leading to the open line of his shirt.

Papi, instead of shoving Haled against the wall and further exploring with his mouth, hops onto his own kitchen counter and resumes the beer which he had abandoned twenty minutes ago. He drinks like he’s a dying man and knocks the back of his head against the cabinet.

Haled looks at him. He tries to appear neutral, the stone-cold façade of Tewfiq and the men of the band, but the adrenaline has not faded. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes,” he says, as though he is out of breath, “just… Have never done this before. Sorry. I need a minute.”

Haled shakes his head. “It is okay. I understand,” he replies, following suit and taking his own beer bottle. He eases back into his seat from earlier, extends his legs before him. The evening stretches forward.

The only noise is Haled’s teeth clinking against the glass as he drinks.

“Why did you want to come with me? To the city?”

He shrugs. “You seem like a good host,” Haled says, teasing, but softly. “And interesting. I wanted to… see what you were doing.”

Papi nods, swallows, and takes another sip. “Not as fun as you expected, huh?”

“No, no. It was fun. Roller rink, seeing the city, now you. Not as expected.”

Papi flushes. He ducks his head and stares at the way his own feet knock against the cabinet beneath him. Haled can’t help himself; he rises, abandoning his drink on the table, and stands before Papi, his right hand framing Papi’s left thigh. He’s close enough to be touching, but not quite.

It feels like electricity. Sparks sizzling. Half of Haled is afraid of touching him for fear of setting off something he cannot stop; half of Haled is willing to watch it burn. Here is Papi, a wire strung tightly between two points, something which Haled so desperately wants to touch. Close to his breaking point. Haled can be the one to push him over.

It is hard to mix the thoughts of waters with those of electricity: a dangerous combination. Love is water, Papi is static. The blue crackle as the plug is pushed into the wall, the spark of light. The images do not match: Papi is not to be harmed by the streams, the raindrops, the oceans. Haled is one with them; Papi is to be swept up in them.

“Hi,” says Papi. He is shy again, like the boy in the club that stood frozen as Julia tried to pull him over. Something seizes Haled. Here is a man, so delicate, so crafted by Beit Hatikva. A man who scoffed at Dina’s, a man who scoffed at Haled, a man ready to curl back into himself once the band and Haled leave this town and never return.

“Hi,” says Haled in a whisper, then slides his hands onto Papi’s legs and kisses him.

The noise which starts at the back of Papi’s throat is muffled by Haled’s mouth, and his hands, and the way his body leans into the countertop and in the precious space between the v of Papi’s legs. For someone who has never been kissed, Papi responds easily, ducking down his head to meet Haled in the middle without noticing, moving to hold Haled’s by the temples and rub circles with his thumbs.

Haled is smiling into the kiss. Papi’s feet wrap around his hips and tug him closer still. The extra grip allows him to scoot forward on the countertop, flush against Haled, all heavy and warm and excited.

The pull, Haled had said back at the roller rink, gesturing between Papi and Julia, miming a string between them. He thinks of Julia’s arms wrapping around Papi’s torso, the toes of their roller-skates bumping as they twirled. He feels the tug at his heart again, which he had associated for general longing, general lust, a love for love that he could never quite find. A woman waiting for him at home. A future stretching forward, endless, empty.

He is twenty-six, not in love, and kissing a boy in his apartment in the middle of nowhere. He imagines that that is what his youth is supposed to be like.

He has kissed many people before, but here is Papi, tugging him closer, closer. He is always pressing. Papi is desperate for something, anything, a feeling again. The way he holds onto Haled makes it all too obvious; this desert has made him forget what pure emotion was. Acting on it. Brashness and stupidity which Haled know far too well.

Still, Haled is thinking far too much for a man who is kissing Papi in the hushed corners of his apartment. He is far too handsome to be forgotten in Haled’s thoughts.

Papi’s hips come dangerously close to grinding against Haled’s stomach, and at the heat which makes him flush, he hikes his hands beneath Papi’s knees as to pick him up. He pauses, for a moment, Papi stopping in confusion with him. The expression he wears is both more blissful and lost.

“May I take you to the bedroom?”

“Yes,” Papi is saying, and the suggestion that Haled will not be able to lift him is on his lips, except Haled seizes him before he can finish. Papi is solid and real and not an impossible woman sponsored by his mother and father, a mere image in his mind: Papi is here, and wrapping his arms around his neck, and laughing as he tries to regain his breath.

It is not hard to find Papi’s room. It is not hard to find anything in this town.

Haled lets Papi down and straddles him on his bed in one swift motion. The bedroom, like the majority of the apartment, is a hair too small. He wonders if all of Beit Hatikva lives in too-smallness inside their apartments stacked up in lines. There are apartments and there is Dina’s café. Back and forth. Mundane in its simplicity.

Still, Haled ignores the sound of his own thoughts, mindless droning, and kisses along Papi’s neck: beneath the chin, then the Adam’s apple, then lower still. He sucks at a soft spot on the right side of his neck to hear Papi giggle and try to get even closer to Haled. Light stubble trails from Papi’s chin to his neck and the roughness there contradicts everything else.

Haled pulls off, examines the red spot blooming where his mouth just was, and moves to remove Papi’s shirt. Cotton. He slips the buttons off using his thumb and middle-finger and feels Papi’s eyes on him; awe, a kind of reverence, desire. He is vaguely aware that he should slow down, feel the beats, let Papi lead him through it. He is also vaguely aware of the tension building where their skin touches, where Haled’s weight is too much on Papi, where there is warmth and pressure.

He pushes the shirt off of Papi’s shoulders and notices black ink on the left side of his chest. Words in Hebrew. He pauses, looks at the curvatures of the letters. “What is this?”

“A saying,” Papi manages, half-croaking; he clears his throat and props himself up on his elbows to look at Haled, at the place where Haled’s fingernail touches the tattoo. “My mother’s favorite.”

“What does it mean?”

“‘Say little and do much’.”

Haled waits. If there is further explanation, if Papi will further indulge him with the parts of his life that he wraps up tightly, then the moment must stay as it is, significant and sizzling. Papi senses it just as much as Haled does, but he does not speak, does not explain his mother or the Hebrew words or why they are written on his skin.

Haled kisses him again as he imagines Papi with a needle to his chest, bared, waiting for the jolt. He bites at Papi’s lower lip and hears him yelp.

He notices fingers fumbling with his shirt, trying to find the buttons and unhook them. The dress shirt, the jacket, it is all too complicated; Haled pushes Papi aside, endlessly gentle, as a lover must be. The smile pulls at his face even as he looks to the line of his own chest, with Papi’s eyes on him and him alone. Papi presses his lips to Haled’s temple, his eyelid, his nose in the meantime, feather-light.

After divulging himself of his own shirt, Haled settles up on top of Papi again, kissing him for a breath of a moment before stopping once more.

“You never kissed before?”

He furrows his brow at the interruption. Haled still sits straddling him. His lips are kissed and swollen. “Once or twice. In high school. With girls.”

“Mostly the same, eh?”

“Mostly,” Papi says before he brings both of his hands to frame Haled’s chin. The heel of his palm rubs against his stubble. “Except for this.”

Haled leans into his hands, closes his eyes, basks in the attention. “Rougher, than a girl’s,” he hears himself saying, but the sensation of Papi’s skin on his overrides whatever coherent thought he may have had.

Papi hums, then curls his fingers to have his nails scraping against the beginning of a beard, softly. The noise sends shivers down Haled’s spine. “Yes. But I like it.”

It is neither one of their intent to be kissing again, but Haled is swimming in the sundown. He cannot hear the deafening noise of the quiet, or the humming of the fridge, or the buzz of conversations behind other closed doors in other little worlds. Dina and Tewfiq are still awake, waiting for him, their voices lowered to discuss life and love in the soft glow of Dina’s kitchen. Haled can feel it, can feel their conversation, can feel them waiting for him but not really waiting for him at all. A concert is an excuse for their lateness, the casual ignoring of their exhaustion as they hope for Haled to open the door.

Except, Haled knows, they do not hope for him to enter at all. Tewfiq’s eyes will rise to the entrance, thumb circling around the base of his glass, wine untouched, but he does not want to see Haled and does not expect him. Still, it is all in the motions.

Even more so, entering Dina’s apartment would as much shatter the mirror which reflects Haled and Papi here, pressed together on an unmade bed. They do not deal in the borders of politeness, the age-worn quality which makes both Dina and Tewfiq hesitate. Haled has not learned to hesitate, and he has spent an evening convincing Papi to forget whatever he knows. Papi is a slow learner, but he is trying. Fingers rising to Haled’s hair, legs wrapping around torsos, lips touching any expanses of skin.

The evening, which had been written in the cool tones of the sky and the sea, blossoms in its warmer shift. With Tewfiq, with Dina, with Papi; Beit Hatikva is written in different shades than Alexandria, than his buttoned-up suit, than the world that he is so familiar with. The lamps are orange-yellow, Papi’s cheeks are flushed red, and the cream walls of Papi’s apartment are painted golden by the low light.

Midnight in tiny towns always brings out the poetry in him. Papi, the idea of love, the swirling sensation of the roller rink. His fingerprints find the indents of Papi’s hips and he puts pressure there. His leg finds its way between Papi’s, his body finds traction. Papi makes a sound, almost a laugh but also something of a cry of surprise. Haled is on top of him, leaning into him at every point. Their shirts are pooled on the floor, Haled’s perfect jacket gathering wrinkles from the angle.

Kissing messily shifts into kissing desperately, which changes back into kissing softly. Haled presses his lips against Papi’s once, twice, half a second each, and at it, Papi blushes and smiles and tries to berate Haled for teasing. He starts in Hebrew then, realizing his mistake, quickly changes to English, and turns pinker at the error; Haled kisses him again into silence, and the tension leaves his body quickly as it came.

Haled has never been more thankful for the fact that love, like all acts and motions, is a universal language.

Papi, in all his charm, waits for Haled’s guidance at most points. Hovering, like a hummingbird; wings beating fast in his chest, watching for the next movement with wide eyes. It is not until Haled grinds their hips together that Papi feels he is granted the choice to buck up against him.

Haled feels younger than he is. It is often so before the band, as the youngest man in a group of aging musicians who only know the beats of classical Arab music. Still, he melts like he is a younger man, a boy, a teenager trying to find his grip in the dark.

He slips his hand past the waistband of Papi’s jeans and strokes, waits for the noise that will fall from his lips. Perhaps they are teenagers searching for each other in the late-night isolation of this village. Papi groans. Tilts back his head. Tries to meet Haled’s hand with quick, frantic movements.

Haled is so full of longing that his heart weighs heavy in his chest. Every movement of Papi is perfect in its imperfection, and while he knows Papi is just a stranger that he has talked to for an hour while waiting inside a roller rink, it is heavenly. The paradoxical state of lightness and solidness is transcendent.

The firmness of Papi’s knee beneath his palm and the circles he had made at the bone, Haled distantly realizes, were foretelling of this. One can only play along in the art of seduction before falling into it.

Papi, frustrated with waiting, pushes away Haled’s touch in an attempt to reciprocate the gesture. He feels Haled’s neck, sucks there, then trails down further; the line of his sternum, the navel, and a squeeze lower still. He is anxious to provoke a response. When he nips at Haled’s ear and jerks his hand, Haled weakens, softens like putty.

Haled wishes to push further, further, further. He knows, however, that inevitably, he can only hold off the clock for so long.

“I have to go.”

“What?” Papi asks, jolting upright. “Go where?”

“I promised to play. For Dina and Tewfiq,” he explains, still hovering close to Papi. Their mouths are inches from touching. Haled will get lost in it if he indulges.

“Now?”

“Soon,” he says, but he is already pulling himself up. The springs of the mattress groan at the movement. “I should not keep them waiting.”

Papi begins to stop him, reaching for him and stopping short even if he is within an arm’s reach. He says, “But–,” cuts himself off, then lets out a huff of air through his nose. “I am…”

“I will be back,” Haled reassures quickly. He finds the zipper and button of his slacks and adjusts them before pulling off the bed entirely and holding up his shirt. “Just a concert.”

“My Funny Valentine?”

“Yes,” Haled says, grinning brightly. “Will not take long.”

Standing at the foot of the bed, Papi is more in tatters than he had expected. His hair is disheveled around his head, his lips are pink, and his breath still comes quickly, his chest rising and falling in a feverish beat. The ink on his chest is outlined in red, lavished by Haled’s mouth. There is the spot at Papi’s neck where Haled sucked, still yet to turn the darker shade of a bruise.

If Haled watches him for much longer, he will never be able to leave. “I will be back,” he repeats, fixing the jacket on his shoulders.

“Yes, yes,” says Papi, who quickly realizes that he should show Haled to the door. He stands and lurches. Legs like jelly. He looks up at Haled and flashes him a smile at his own fumble. “I will… show you out.”

Papi does not bother pulling on his shirt again; there’s no need to. As he presses close to Haled and leads him to the front door again, voice dropped to a whisper, Haled feels the energy crackling. He may cave. He will keep Tewfiq and Dina up until two, three in the morning if he does.

The concert will last three minutes. Walking there and back will take six. Perhaps Dina will offer him a drink. He will refuse, with Tewfiq’s eyes on him, with Papi waiting for him in his own apartment, not daring to touch himself but growing impatient. Haled thinks of it briefly, for if he takes any longer, leaving will be even harder.

It is a moment ending. It will regain itself once Haled returns, he thinks, tucking the trumpet case beneath his arm, standing outside of the doorframe. Papi will be waiting for him. The world of Alexandria, of Petah Tikvah, of home, does not wait, but Papi will.

“I will be right back,” Haled says, slowly, more for himself than for Papi. He never was one for the sentimentality of things such as this, but he has always understood the significance of things. The purpose of a movement. That is why he can lift up Papi in a roller rink and send him skating towards a girl, that is why he can explain the details of love without fully understanding it himself: it is the intention behind the hand on the knee and the arm around the shoulder which are clear as crystal.

There is a whole other moment to shatter in Dina’s apartment. He wonders if Tewfiq has had any more wine, if their eyes are just short of closing, if they have talked about the indecipherable pasts between the two of them. Or, perhaps, they sit in silence. Both thoughts are just as sacred.

Haled takes two careful steps away from the front of the apartment. Papi settles against the door, arms crossed, shoulders shrugged. He smiles. “I will wait here,” he says, like it’s all a joke, “be fast.”

Haled opens his mouth, nods, then grins right back. “Just a concert,” he says, then turns back towards where Dina and Tewfiq and the music are waiting. The balcony to his left leads out into a world of darkness, but not an all-consuming kind; the quiet, pleasant shadow of Israel, a crescent moon in the sky catching no light on the village below. Everything else is not so endless and vast.

The ocean, Papi says, is infinite, and thus fearsome in its invincibility. It is the ceaselessness which is frightening. Beit Hativka is not like the ocean swirling in Papi’s head, nor the night which Haled knows in Alexandria. It is perfect in its smallness, in its homeliness, in the silence well before the evening is over as Haled and Papi wander their way back to the apartments. This, as is everything, is fleeting, but perhaps Haled does not regret getting himself and the band stuck in Israel.

He has one night in the village of Beit Hatikva, and he intends to make it last.

**Author's Note:**

> Papi: it would be weird if i brought a girl back to my apartment, with the band staying here and everything
> 
> Papi, less than an hour later: *making out with Haled on his bed*  
>    
> anyways! I was counting the number of people and the band and considering the numbers, I assume two would say in the restaurant and two would stay at Papi's apartment (assuming Papi has the same size apartment as Dina/the restaurant is not well-stocked for people sleeping there). I, however, totally made that up.
> 
> I don't actually know what the Arabic that Haled said to Tewfiq in the musical was when they were in Dina's apartment, but in the film, he says "The woman wants to go out, why not take her out?"!
> 
> dialogue is messy because I don't know enough about Arabic/Hebrew. forgive me!  
>    
> though I assume everyone came from tumblr to read this, hit me up at @shotbyafool!


End file.
